Into Her Hand
by tinyvariations
Summary: Well that was...awkward. After a talk about 'talking,' and lesbians and unicorns (apparently), Nicole and Waverly find their thoughts and their emotions spinning wildly. How do they manage to spin into one another? Alternately, how Waverly and Nicole go from miscommunication and 'just friends' to locking themselves in the sheriff's office in two easy steps. An elaboration on 1x09.
1. Chapter 1

**Into her hand**

 _Bull riders use the term "into her hand" or "into my hand" to describe the scenario in which a bull is spinning in the same direction of a rider's riding hand. For example, a right-handed bull rider on a bull that spins to the right is riding a bull "into her hand."_

* * *

It's a genuine miracle that Officer Nicole Haught is not behind the wheel of her department-issued patrol vehicle when it finally dawns on her just what happened with Waverly Earp this morning. These revelatory moments, the consequential ones at least, tend to be all-encompassing. The eyes may be open but they cease to see. Sound waves ricochet across the ears but the messages fail to move the drum. It's like the world is trying to get in but all it gets in return is a busy signal. Call back later. It's almost as if the human body views such pivotal epiphanies as so vital to its continued survivability that it shuts off power to anything it views as momentarily non-essential - sort of like a modified fight or flight response. Such an occurrence at the wrong place or the wrong time? Ill-advised. A temporarily comatose deputy driving through downtown could wreak havoc. _Could._ Given the general sleepiness of Purgatory in winter, though, even during the busier hours of the day, the victims of such an event are more likely to be parking meters and curbs than citizens.

Instead, Purgatory dodges potential catastrophe. Officer Haught is off-duty, finally, safely settled at home. With her uniform discarded in the dirty clothes basket and her hat perched haphazardly on the chair in the living room, Nicole is stretched out on her bed in a more domestic uniform - flannel pajama pants and a well-worn hoodie. She takes another sip of beer from the mostly empty bottle in her hand. A trickle of condensation creeps down her thumb, and she flicks it away unconsciously.

Today had ended up being just one headache after another. Nicole goes down the list of events in her head like she's playing the world's worst game of BINGO. First she wrote an admittedly unusual report and submitted it to her boss, only to have him question her sanity and her willingness to stay in Purgatory. Attempt number two met with the same fate. So...check one. Shortly thereafter, she got called out to Allen St. by a "concerned citizen" - her money's on Donna from the beauty shop, since she lives down the road and can invariably be found with her nose pressed to her front window when she's home (incidentally, Nicole suspects there's a strong correlation between this and Donna's position as the town gossip). Once there, she found a handful of teenage boys just on the verge of doing something stupid. They're the kind of kids who dare each other to do progressively stupider feats until, inevitably, one of them catches a charge and gets to ride downtown like a big kid. Although they all went home to their parents today, Nicole committed their faces to memory, sure that one of them will end up in the back of her car in the next year or so. Check two.

No sooner had she gotten back in her vehicle and pointed it in the direction of the office than the radio squawked to life, redirecting her to a domestic situation developing a few blocks from her location. Evidently, one of Purgatory's finest fellows had gotten drunk as a skunk and thought arguing with his girlfriend was a good way to spend the twilight hours. His neighbors disagreed, having grown tired of the noise and called the cops. Domestics are usually stressful, volatile, an endless he said/she said. By the time the dust settled at this one, the drunk had been sent off to his sister's house for the night to sober up and cool down, but not before vomiting all over the curb by Nicole's squad car. Check three. Once more at the station (and after a quick run through the car wash), the deputy had enough time to write up her daily reports and submit the final version of her "totally normal, not in any way, shape, or form supernatural" report from last week's events. And check four.

The TV drones in the background. Nicole watches without seeing. Instead, she turns her bottle around in her hands, using her fingernail to catch the edge of the damp label.

Three times. That's how many times she had to write her report on last week's events. Three times she had to relive it in encyclopedic detail. She's tried to establish a clinical distance about it.

Tried being the operative word.

Her body goes cold remembering the frightening speed at which the initial attack unfolded. Even though it didn't help her report, to be honest, it's a bit of a blessing that she doesn't have a lot of visual memories to replay over and over again like some sort of morbid highlight reel. For the most part the images are broken, fragmented. Flashes of light, bits of sky. Darkness. Mostly darkness. But where sight had failed, her other senses had stepped up to compensate - Henry was right about that, at least. So, no, she doesn't have the image of blood coating her uniform seared into her brain. Nor is she forced to replay the sight of her own blood dripping down the steering wheel, pooling on the floorboard, or smeared onto the driver's side door panel. But she remembers plenty.

She remembers the unique sensation of feeling the sticky warmth of her blood soaking into her uniform at the same time that its absence from her veins left her body temperature plummeting. Like having the flu, being buried under a veritable mountain of blankets but still unable to stop the shivering.

She remembers the smell. Smell is a strong memory trigger. Anytime Nicole smells the smoke of a cigar, she's transported back to childhood visits with her grandpa out on his ranch, sitting on the front porch as the sun set, listening to him tell tall tales while he enjoyed a smoke. But this - the smell of metal. Of iron. So much blood spilled in the close confines of her car - she doesn't think that smell will ever quite go away. In the safety of her bedroom, she imagines she smells it still, clinging to her nostrils, her mouth, her lungs. It haunts her.

When one of the doctors let slip that she had to be resuscitated before she ever even made it to the hospital...well. This is personal. Danger is part and parcel of the job, and she'd be lying if she said she never gave any consideration to what it would be like to go down in the line of duty. But like that? Sliced, drugged, battered. Hauled through the woods. Discarded and half buried in the snow for nature to finish. No, she'd never considered that. No one would have considered that. And Wynonna - Nicole shudders. How much more harrowing her experience had been. At least for Nicole, the events were quick, left to her fate without much fanfare.

Her hands tremble around her beer bottle, and she blinks back the moisture threatening to fall from her eyes.

Surprisingly, the doctors didn't keep her more than a few days. The miracles of modern medicine. Just as well - after the initial Black Badge questioning, her only visitor had been Nedley, keeping her up to speed on the search for Wynonna and reassuring her that her cat was doing alright. The latter, though well-intentioned, was clearly an exaggeration for her benefit, if the scratch marks on his hands were anything to go by. Still, the oppressive monotony of the hospital, with its robust offering of three TV channels (all infomercials, all the time), left her with nothing but time to think.

With Nedley refusing to bring any of the case files to her temporary office at the hospital, a gesture Nicole assumes was meant to convey fatherly concern (but came off as more on the patronizing side), she'd resorted to filling her time by combing through the facts of the case piece by piece from memory. Working under the assumption that the ambush was tied to the serial killer responsible for at least three bodies in Purgatory's morgue, she analyzed every detail, every observation, every damn fiber she could remember. She'd pick up a fact, examine it from this angle, examine it from that angle, and find its place in relation to every other piece in the file. It was like trying to put together a puzzle with no picture to reference. But with a killer on the loose and Wynonna still unaccounted for, she had to try. She had to do _something_.

Between the mental catalogue of crime scene minutiae, the autopsy reports on the previous victims, the details of their injuries - no, surgeries - and the bits and pieces she'd managed to ear hustle from Deputy Marshall Dolls and crew both in her hospital room and the other day at the station (for professionals they really have a lack of awareness of the volume of their voices in public spaces), she had enough pieces of the puzzle to see the rough outlines of the subject.

It sure as hell hadn't been easy to write her original report. She knows how it sounded, how it read. She felt like Purgatory's own version of Fox Mulder. But Sherlock Holmes said, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Sherlock, however, also didn't have a boss telling him that was unacceptable. So. In the end, she did what she was asked. She edited. Rewrote. Re-imagined. She bent and manipulated the truth until it was almost unrecognizable, leaving her sick to her stomach with shame and head throbbing to beat the band. But with the sheriff questioning if she even wanted to stay in a place like Purgatory after all, what else could she have done?

So. Three times.

The cat leaps onto the bed and pads over to the off-duty deputy, stepping heavily onto her stomach and chest. Wincing in pain, Nicole sucks in a sharp breath and sits up more fully, letting her cat circle and settle in lap instead. With her cat purring contentedly, its eyes closed, Nicole rubs lightly at the fading bruise on her chest, a souvenir from Jack. Or the unsub, whatever Nedley wants to call him.

 _Not the right kind, huh? Well, not exactly my type either, Jack._

It wasn't so bad, lying in that ditch. Between the pain and the shock and the numbing cold, consciousness was fleeting. But there were times she'd open her eyes, see the sky above. Times when she could feel the barest of warmth from the sun peeking through the clouds. In those brief moments of clarity, she'd focus on her talisman again - the thing that anchors her when the world gets to be too dark, that reminds her that there's good here.

Waverly Earp, smiling at her from her front porch. As Nicole lay there, her body getting colder, weaker, she found herself wishing Waverly was with her. Her personal ray of sunshine. Maybe then the chill wouldn't settle so quickly into her bones. Maybe then she would have told her how that smile makes anything seem possible. Waiting for death, she'd found herself smiling weakly.

Credits roll on the TV screen in front of her, and Nicole shakes her head, trying to ditch the melancholy, but instead she rattles loose the memory of today's...unusual encounter with Waverly outside the station.

Even as distracted as she was when they had nearly collided earlier, her memory of the conversation is remarkably intact. Truthfully, her memory of all things Waverly-related or Waverly-adjacent is embarrassingly clear - like "hope to God no one else figures that out because it can never be lived down" kind of clear. So, like she's doing one of her cop exercises, she rewinds and replays the scene, observing the interaction as an objective third party and gathering data for analysis.

Eyes closed, she tips her head back, draining the dregs of beer out of the bottle before pulling it down, away from her lips.

And that - that is the moment it hits her. The realization causes a chain reaction that, perhaps later (much later), she'll find hilarious.

In surprise, she inhales sharply, which, as it turns out, is the exact wrong thing to do with a mouth full of beer. It starts to go down the wrong pipe, which naturally leaves her a coughing, spluttering mess, her face quickly reddening to a shade not too far off from the color of her hair. It's like her body suddenly forgot how to function.

The cat darts away, annoyed at being moved and at the droplets of beer clinging to her fur. She begins to clean her coat, pausing every few seconds to throw indignant looks at her owner.

 _Holy shit._

She blinks rapidly. Her jaw hits the floor.

"HOLY SHIT." When she speak the words aloud, the cat looks up at her with distaste.

So to summarize, when she'd asked to talk to Waverly, Waverly responded that they were "totally overdue for a talk."

 _Way to be non-specific, Nicole. Real helpful._

And then there's the kicker - "I just discovered it when I met you. You're kind of special."

 _Kind of special?!_

Nicole finds it difficult to resist the urge to bury her head in the comforter. Her groan, though, would make Tina Belcher proud.

She's been so wrapped up in this Purgatory bullshit that she's completely missed what was literally two feet in front of her face. This girl, the one she's crazy about, the one she's promised to wait patiently at a distance for - this girl stood in front of her today and told her she feels it, too.

Waverly was right there, RIGHT THERE, calling her special, and all Nicole took away from it was-

 _Oh my god. No..._

Nicole finally remembers how the conversation ended - with her accusing Waverly of making fun of her, and then stomping off in a huff.

 _Christ._

Waverly was right there, with her awkward jokes and her willingness to be vulnerable. This is the Waverly Nicole loves to see, the one that's open, honest. It's not Waverly the barmaid or Waverly the town mascot. It's just...Waverly.

And what did Nicole do?

Without stopping to wonder why Waverly was there or considering what might have been on her mind, she just barrelled right over her, the pent-up frustration of writing and rewriting that damned report and of reliving that attack erupting at the worst possible time. Such amazing powers of observation...

She bangs her head frustratedly into the mattress.

 _Worst. Cop. Ever._

Nicole sits up and grudgingly gets out of bed, heading to the kitchen to grab another beer.

Well, that's check five then.

BINGO.

* * *

When Nicole's shift starts the next day, she immediately heads out on "patrol." Naturally, she starts her patrol at Shorty's. Important police business. As soon as she walks through the doors, she spies a woman behind the bar, but not the one she's hoping to find. This one is older, with an air of confidence that can only come from being in charge. Gus. The deputy approaches the dimly lit bar top and asks, "Excuse me - is Waverly working today?"

"She's not due for another hour," Gus responds, eyeing Nicole critically. "You, uh, must be Officer Haught," she continues. Nicole furrows her brow, unsure where this is going, but nods all the same. "Waverly's told me a lot about you."

Nicole's eyebrows shoot up of their own accord, and she feels the blush rising in her cheeks. Cocking her head to the side, Gus scrutinizes the deputy's reaction before nodding to herself, her expression unreadable, but a ghost of a smile lingering at the corners of her mouth.

"Check the farm road on the west side of town." With a wink, Gus turns her back on Officer Haught and sets to work stocking the glassware on the other side of the well.

Thoroughly confused, Nicole accepts the advice and the dismissal, striding back out the double doors to her waiting vehicle.

For the hundredth time in the last twelve hours she repeats her apology in her head before chastising herself for creating this mess in the first place. Purgatory passes by her windows, unseen. In a matter of minutes the town fades into country, brick buildings replaced by wooden barns, concrete replaced by pastures. A small silhouette stalks down the road in the distance.

She takes a deep breath.

 _This conversation has GOT to go better than the last one._


	2. Chapter 2

When the mug's glass bottom hits the wooden bar top with just a smidge too much oomph, its contents lurch dangerously, and a few sips' worth of beer slosh over the lip, wasted.

"Sorry about that!" Waverly croaks in apology to the patron sitting across from her before turning away to find a rag. When she spins back to the customer, rag ready in hand, she finds the gentleman delicately picking up the wet glass and getting up from his stool, a grimace firmly in place, before turning away, presumably to find a spot in the bar where his beer is a little safer.

Rolling her eyes, she bites out a frustrated groan.

 _C'mon, Waverly! Get your head in the game!_

Well, all things considered, it could be worse. Poor Mr. Calvin - he came in about an hour ago for his daily mid-afternoon indulgence. Unfortunately, he left promptly thereafter, wearing it. Waverly, her mind elsewhere, had misjudged the height of the bar, and when the glass destined for him caught on the edge, it tumped over on its side, sending an entire pint of Bud rushing right across the wood and all down his front.

She adds the latest spill to the shift's long laundry list of 'incidents.' It's like it's her first week on the job or something. Working at Shorty's is hardly rocket science, and she's been here long enough that she should be able to pull a shift with her eyes closed. But filling orders, making small talk, seeing to customers - all of these things require her to be present. Mentally present. With her mind spinning in a million different directions, none of them here, she's nothing more than a warm body. A warm, counter-productive, moderately destructive body.

Rag in hand, Waverly wipes down the bar, careful to remove any trace of stickiness from the latest spill. That, at least, she can get right. When the bar is clean and dry, she turns to throw the towel into the bin a few feet away. Grazing the bin, the rag instead lands with a wet smack on the floor nearby. Because of course it does.

Indignant, Waverly glares at the traitorous article before stomping over, snatching it off the floor, and depositing it forcefully into the basket like she's meting out a death sentence.

When she looks up, she finds Gus observing her from across the room, her face unreadable.

Turning her back to Gus, Waverly leans heavily against the sturdy wood behind her, arms folded petulantly across her chest. Gus hasn't said it, not outright, but the papers she's been poring over the last hour, the phone calls - it doesn't take a detective to figure it out.

She's really selling the bar. It's a done deal. God, the ink is probably halfway to dry by now. The stab of pain Waverly feels at the thought grows threefold when she considers that despite days of wracking her brain, she just can't come up with a solid explanation for why Gus would want to sell the bar now...or, you know, ever. She doesn't think it's financial - Shorty's turns a tidy profit (surprisingly so, but there's something to be said for a captive audience), so Gus doesn't have anything to worry about there. What will either of them do for work? Waverly rolls her eyes a little at that. Obviously she needs to work, but the dubious future of her illustrious barmaid gig isn't responsible for the turmoil in her head. That's just the easiest excuse, the only one everyone else is capable of seeing.

The sad truth is that none of this should really be all that surprising to her. Not really. There was this course she took online last year that touched on the overlap of basic mythological concepts found in a statistical majority of cultures, flung far across the globe and through time. Eventually the topic turned to an idea humans have been fascinated with for time immortal, Waverly being no exception. Fate. Kismet. The idea that there's another agency at work determining the order of things, like a supernatural shot-caller.

The Ancient Greeks believed that everyone, whether mortal or immortal, had a thread of life spun by the Moirai, a thread that represented fate, a path upon which they were destined to walk during their lifetime, right up until the time the thread was cut and their walk was deemed to be done. Most people have an even mixture of light and dark, winding their way through the difficult and joyous in equal measure. If left to create her own way, Waverly would have spun a thread of serendipity, a life of happy coincidence, a pleasant surprise around each corner ahead.

But that, apparently, wasn't what the Fates had in store for her. Quite the opposite. Waverly's fate, it seems, is cruel. What else could it be? Her mom left when she was four - her dad and Willa were taken from her when she was only six. And Wynonna...it wasn't too long after the events at the farm that Wynonna was ripped from her. Committed. Put in foster homes. She was in and out, always in trouble, always running away until the day a little over three years ago when Waverly thought she had left for good.

So, no, she's not a girl who knows serendipity. The unifying thread of Waverly's life is loss, impermanence. She's the girl who loses…everything.

She chuckles darkly. Maybe that's the real Earp family curse.

She spent a long time being a scared little girl – alone, grasping desperately onto anything that offered the hint of permanence or normalcy. Gus and Curtis took her in. Then there was Shorty, who cherished his surrogate father role with everything he had. Together they'd all forged a makeshift family, and it was here, in Shorty's bar, that they made their home. To her side, she eyes Curtis' chair at the bar, his name memorialized forever on the plate on the back. Well...maybe not forever now.

It's happening all over again.

Curtis is gone. Shorty, too. And now? Now it's the bar's turn.

She can feel the tears threatening in her eyes, and she closes them roughly, trying to stop them in their tracks.

As she's grown, she's fought hard to build something out of her life's chaos, like stitching together a patchwork quilt out of someone else's scraps. But she can feel the fabric tearing, ripping apart at the seams. When her homemade quilt is gone, what will be left underneath?

She'll be vulnerable. Laid bare.

Perhaps the worst part - so far, there hasn't been a dang thing she could do to stop any of it. Not with Curtis. Not with Shorty, and not with Gus and the bar. It's exactly this lack of control that has her spiraling sharply, the picture of panic.

Everything is changing, and she can't stop it. She's a little girl, alone, standing still in a crowd, her quilt in tatters around her shoulders while the world moves along past her, never stopping, never seeing.

Reaching out to grasp the warm wooden edging of the bar behind her, Waverly steadies her trembling limbs and tries to rein in the impending breakdown. When the shivering subsides and her breathing comes more easily, she grabs a towel and gets back to work, prepping the bar for happy hour.

It's hard to say how much time passes - she's thrown herself into her manual labor in a desperate but not altogether unsuccessful attempt to quiet the storm in her mind. When Shorty's doors creak open, Waverly turns toward the movement automatically. Just like she has every single time the doors have opened since her shift started, a strange mixture of hope and anxiety fluttering in her veins. A couple of guys from the Henderson ranch stroll in and head to the corner to meet their buddies by the pool table, peeling off the extra layers of coats and gloves as they cross the threshold. Annoyed with herself for getting her hopes up, Waverly continues working, cleaning and arranging the glassware in the well for easy access.

 _You know she's not coming. Not after today._

Sighing heavily, she redoubles her energy. While good in theory, in practicality, this results in glassware meeting the bar top with a little too much force...again, attracting the attention of a few patrons at a nearby table. Wisely, they get a peek at the look on Waverly's face and decide to mind their own business.

Logically, she knows better than to look, knows better than to think Nicole will come strolling in, all smiles and swagger. Not after their talk in the car earlier. Not after everything Waverly said. Since their first meeting, Nicole let Waverly set the boundaries, set the rules, satisfied to be a maybe someday. A maybe someone.

 _Just friends._

Words like poison on her lips, knives on her tongue.

They were the last thing she'd really wanted to say earlier. And yet...she said them, an involuntary outburst mired in paralyzing fear. She spit them out and couldn't take them back.

One of the ranch guys breaks away from the pack by the pool table and swaggers up to the bar, his turn to order a pitcher for the group. Waverly fills the pitcher without fanfare and passes it back to him as quickly as she can. His response is flirtatious, a cheap line delivered with all the charm of an intestinal bug. Given the look of unadulterated disgust that forms on her face, he may as well have said that he hates puppies. When the only response he gets is a stare, his grin falters. Without a word, Waverly turns away, finding a stretch of bar top on the other side of the well in need of her attention. Grabbing another towel, she begins to wipe it down and returns to the cold comfort of her thoughts.

Gus, watching the events unfold over the top of her paperwork, chuckles and shakes her head.

Yeah. Sure, Waverly. Whatever you want.

Ten minutes. It took ten minutes in the squad car to make it back to town, back to Shorty's. With Nicole's words playing through her mind on an infinite loop, each time more demoralizing than the last, ten minutes felt more like ten frickin' lifetimes. Outside her window, the frozen fields and silent barns of the country slowly gave rise to the sleepy tableau of downtown Purgatory in the grip of winter, the clouds thick overhead, the day gray, and people sparse. Waverly saw none of it. Sitting in the passenger seat, she tried in vain to melt into the leather.

Neither of them spoke. Talking – for the two of them – hadn't done either of them any favors recently. But the silence was excruciating. Interminable. Briefly, Waverly considered stealing Nicole's taser, thinking a quick, self-inflicted jolt might let her ride this thing out unconscious and save them both from the tension, but her rational side kicked in. There were the obvious deterrents, of course, but the kicker, as far as Waverly was concerned, was location. Tasers are standard carry non-lethal weapons for deputies, and as such, are worn along with the rest of the tactical gear on the duty belt. Reaching for Nicole, tugging at her hips – Waverly's mouth had gone dry at the thought, a blush creeping into her cheeks, before she swallowed roughly and resumed trying to just disappear into the floorboard.

A half dozen times during the journey Waverly steeled her nerves and opened her mouth, preparing to say something – anything – to raise the white flag, only to close her mouth again, exhaling slowly and retreating back to the agonizing silence when her courage failed. In between these doomed efforts, she found herself stealing glances at the deputy beside her, noticing the tightness in the set of her jaw, the occasional tired sigh. Once or twice, she thought she saw Nicole's lips move, mouth open, like maybe she was going to be the one to speak up.

But she never did. So they rode on silently, side by side, feeling for all the world like they were a galaxy apart.

When the squad finally pulled along the curb outside of Shorty's, Waverly was surprised to find she was reluctant to get out of the car, like shutting the passenger door behind her would carry an air of finality she didn't really intend. With the engine idling and warm air still pumping through the vents, she took another second to gather her nerve before reaching for the handle.

"Hey…Waves," Nicole said softly. "Umm…," she started, before seeming to change course mid-sentence, "have a good shift." And then she had smiled. Sure, it was more reserved than the ones she'd aimed at Waverly in the past, her jaw still set tightly, her hands firm on the wheel, but the warmth in her eyes bridged the universe between them. Afraid to open her mouth – afraid to make anything worse, Waverly mumbled, "You, too." Ducking her head, she nodded once before exiting the vehicle, entering the bar without a second glance.

After that, Waverly had assumed that a couple of hours of solid work would ease the tension that had settled deep into her bones.

She was wrong.

Giving up on the bar top and switching to cleaning bottles, Waverly's brain is steadily vacillating between paralyzing fear of taking a step forward in her personal relationships, overwhelming self-doubt about her future, and a panic attack about the entire world crumbling down around her shoulders. Days like today make her wish she could sit down on the other side of the bar like a true Earp, shots of whiskey lined up in front of her like a lighted runway in the night.

What she told Nicole yesterday in the street was the truth, a candid moment from a fit of bravery. The deputy is special, and there is definitely something there. But it's complicated. And totally new for Waverly. And did she mention complicated? With her world spinning out of control, her entire paradigm shifting its polarity, and the sharp sting of another potential loss on the horizon, she's afraid to take a chance. Her whole world is changing. How can she start something so – critical – at a time like this, when she's reeling and dizzy and scrambling to find her footing?

Right now, standing at the bar, what she wants most in this world is a chance to explain, to tell Nicole that when she says "You're special," what she really means is "I want you, too." That "just friends" is actually "Please, don't stop trying." She wants to explain that the way Nicole looks at her – she's never felt anything quite like it before, like she's special. Like there's no one else in the world.

But fear – fear is a bitch.

It's like she's stuck in quicksand. Not that Waverly's totally sure there really is such a thing, but having seen it in so many movies growing up, it's always kind of stuck with her as a particularly horrific way to go. The kicker with quicksand is that the more someone struggles, the worse it gets. To Waverly, it feels like she's been struggling against it for so long, trying to claw her way out that she's only managed to be drawn in deeper. At this point, a move in the wrong direction might pull her under completely. Yesterday, in the street, she had a moment of bravery. She talked about it. She named it – this thing between them. And then it promptly blew up in her face. She could feel the quicksand rise, climbing her neck, pressing on her airways, waiting for another chance. Nicole is a lifeline, dangling seemingly just out of reach, and as much as Waverly wants to reach for her, to grab on and never let go, what if that's the decision that pulls her under completely?

With the world crashing down around her head in every which way imaginable, staying still feels like the safest option. If she doesn't take a step, doesn't take a risk, then maybe situation critical can return to situation normal. Maybe then she can work on her bravery. If she tries hard enough, she can almost convince herself that she's being rational and logical rather than simply being paralyzed with fear.

Almost.

She looks up from her busy work again, eyes darting around the space, seeking a perch - some place to land and sit a spell, above the disquietude. When they do settle, it's on Gus, who has moved over to the bar proper. Pen in hand, the owner scratches her name onto the paper in front of her. The ink runs like blood, and Waverly imagines the bar whimpering around her at the fresh wound. Her fear spins, twists. Her sight runs red. Gathering herself like a storm on the horizon, Waverly lets the fear bleed into anger, and the anger winds up. A voice in the back of her mind pleads, platitudes about dialogue and empathy bubbling up to the surface, but the storm winds pick up the pleas and toss them aside. Turning toward Gus's perch at the end of the bar, Waverly begins to close in.

With a creak, the bar's double doors open once more, and out of the corner of her eye, Waverly sees the color combination of one of Purgatory's finest. Pausing, her heart unexpectedly thrumming in her ears, she turns toward the entrance.

In the doorway, looking deceptively casual, is Sheriff Nedley.

 _Happy hour. Right on time._

Releasing the breath she isn't even aware she's holding, Waverly looks away. A twinge of...something she's decidedly not labeling disappointment...flares when she realizes the body in the uniform is the sheriff's, which only serves to compound her annoyance. Behind Nedley is...Dolls? That's new. The storm stalls. Her muscles move out of habit now, knowing the sheriff's daily routine by rote, and it's only a matter of seconds before she has two hot coffees out for them and a few words of greeting. She counts it a success that all of the coffee remains in the mugs. With the detour out of the way, though, Waverly resumes her previous trajectory, zeroing in on Gus. After stalling, though, she makes landfall as more of a tropical storm, less of a hurricane.

"So you just did it. You just went ahead and sold it," she accuses, indignant, but far more reined in than a minute ago.

"Decisions had to be made. I know you don't believe me, but you were not born to be a goddamn small town waitress," Gus responds, exasperated.

"Yeah, I believe you - but I have like, three shirts that say Shorty's." Waverly's angry bluster is weakening, less squall, more sass.

"Honey, it's in the agreement. Shorty's will never get torn down." Gus pauses, eyeing the girl across from her. "You can work here, in as many shirts as you want, for as long as you want." It's almost dismissive, the way she tosses the statement out there before looking back to her papers.

Beside her Waverly shakes her head. _This isn't...ugh...this isn't why I'm mad!_ The frustration bubbles.

"That's not the point-" she begins, but Gus cuts her off.

"But," she says, in a voice that brooks no argument, "when you decide you're ready...to unstick those wings of yours-" Pulling a crisp slip from her pocket, her face a mix of guilt and nerves, she hands it off to Waverly, watching the girl closely. "Don't cash it for a week or so."

"What's this?"

"It's _freedom_ , honey!" Excited, Gus leans over and flicks the check, the sound punctuating the solidness, the reality of the object within Waverly's fingers. "You've been doing what others want you to do for so long. Now you can do whatever it is you want." She eyes Waverly with open affection.

It's like ice cream on a cavity. The nerve exposed, Waverly can't keep the quiver from her voice. It's a minor miracle the moisture, at least, doesn't cloud her eyes. "Which is what?" she asks. What she means is " _How can I? How is that possibly something that I get to do?"_

Gus's expression is disbelieving. When she speaks again, it's like she's trying to explain the obvious. "Live your life! Remember, some of the best things in life are the surprises it throws us-" The older woman pauses, ensuring her words find their mark. "-about what we want. _Who we want_." At this, Waverly's eyes snap tight to Gus's. Breath held, lips parted - she's frozen. The quicksand slides over her chest and reaches for her neck, waiting for one more misstep to swallow her whole.

But then Waverly feels the gentle touch on her arm like a lifeline, and Gus continues, softly, "You've always been an honest kid. Don't stop now." With a kiss to the cheek, the older woman steps away, leaving Waverly alone at the bar again, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth, eyes full of wonder.

The quicksand sinks slowly, like someone has pulled the plug on its drain. The danger is not over, and the mire has left its mark on her body. But for the first time in a long time, she's able to expand her lungs fully.

For the first time in a long time, she can breathe.

"Hey." A man's voice, gruff, calls out to her from behind, snapping her focus. Reluctantly turning, the man continues, "Got a message for Wynonna Earp."

Dismissing him, Waverly's response is simple, "She's not here." Focusing again on the piece of paper in her hands, she wanders further down the bar, leaving the newcomer to wait. Or go. She doesn't care which.

 _What the frilly heck was that?_

She glances at Gus's retreating back once more and replays the conversation in her head, shaking her head. Typical. Totally typical. When Gus sets her mind to something, then it happens. In fact, Waverly can't remember for the life of her a time when Gus ever stood still and let things happen TO her. And apparently she's getting tired of seeing Waverly ignore her example. Cue the patented Gus pep talk – it's hard to say whether it's a pat on the back or a kick in the hiney, but it's effective.

The check is heavy in her hand, and yet she feels weightless. With the stroke of a pen, her world is changed. The bar is sold and freedom bought in one transaction. Waverly has to reach out and steady herself along the bar when her mind begins to spin with the implications. Gus is selling – sold – the bar, but the older woman isn't going anywhere. She's here. She's _family._

 _And she wants me happy…_

A smile ghosts on her lips. Having a support system, people who love her and want her to be unconditionally happy – that's a weird thing for Waverly. Over the years, how much energy has she expended twisting herself into various shapes to please those around her? Playing a role? Being a million different version of herself? And Gus, watching all these years from the bar, seeing through every mask and worrying about her happiness – Waverly shakes her head in wonder. For Waverly, it was easier to be what everyone else wanted than to be the outcast – yet another crazy Earp. It was easier than being lonely.

Change is painful, at least in her experience. Change means another loved one leaving, another loss to endure. Change is silence filled with tears and heartache.

Since Wynonna's return, Waverly's tried and true roles have been slipping away one by one, costumes shed at a final curtain call. Yeah, there's been some blowback. She still shudders thinking of Stephanie, running away from the 'freaks' in the homestead and right into the arms of the zombies on the doorstep. But there's Chrissy, who saw her kill a man and remove a skull from hiding and yet still texts her to ask if she wants to go shopping in the city. And there's Doc, who recognizes the value of her intelligence and holds it in the highest esteem.

Change is finding new friends and leaving behind ones that have been outgrown. It's finding new…"maybe someone's."

Change is Wynonna coming back like the prodigal sister…and bringing the mountain down with her. But these past few months Waverly feels more alive than, well, ever. And with the mountain down, they can finally see through to the other side.

Looking up, Waverly finds her reflection in the long mirror along the wall. The bar's piano sits silent behind her. This is the girl with her own destiny – the Keeper of the Bones. This is the girl who faced the Stone Witch and lived to tell about it. This is the girl –

Her eyes land on Nedley in uniform, talking to Jerry at a nearby table, and her train of thought grinds to a halt.

 _This is the girl who used the words "lesbian" and "unicorn" in a conversation with Nicole yesterday._

She'd be lying if she said she wasn't still apprehensive about people finding out about her attraction to Nicole. It's a knee jerk, and not necessarily one that she's proud of, but after years of shaping herself after the image of Purgatory's citizenry, her joints are stiff and sore, not easily bent anew. To hear from Gus, albeit a little more cryptically than was perhaps necessary, that it doesn't matter is another weight lifted. Combined with the feeling from that check from the sale, Waverly might need an anchor to keep her from floating into space

Remembering how she snapped at the deputy earlier in the car, yelling like a child that she wasn't getting her way, she sighs and puts her head in her hands. It's not like she's got a history of being eloquent around Nicole, so this shouldn't have come as a surprise. In fact their interactions are usually just one long bumbling, awkward ramble on her part – why Nicole is still hanging around after all of that she isn't quite sure. But the car was especially bad. Rambling and denials and-

 _Ughhhhh…I yelled at her, and she just sat there and told me it'd be ok, and…_

That's when Nicole had reached over and touched Waverly's leg, a gesture meant as comfort. They both know it. But when she felt the warmth settle on her thigh, well, her thoughts had become a lot less jumbled and a lot more…focused. She doesn't even bother looking in the mirror – she can feel her mouth go dry and the heat from the blush creep up her face.

So what does she want? If it's hers to choose right here, right now, what does she want?

As if on command, her mind calls up a specific image. From her front porch, wrapped in an old blanket, she's watching Nicole simultaneously question and comfort Chrissy about the bachelorette party from hell in the early morning light out at the homestead, her hand out, steadying the traumatized girl. Even when Chrissy returns to the porch, Waverly continues to watch Nicole and Wynonna talk, wishing she could hear their conversation. It's when Nicole looks up, catching Waverly in a stare – Waverly can feel the smile on her face, sure and sincere. She sees it echoed on Nicole's.

Something inside clicks into place, gently but decisively.

Maybe she's spent too much time at the mercy of the Fates, resigned and pulled along the thread. OK…that's more a definitely. There's a time for brave faces, a time for stiff upper lips. There's a time for seeing to the happiness of others.

But there's also a time to go for broke. To be brazen. To be free. To take control of one's own fate.

 _I'm Waverly Earp, and this is my goddamn life._

She looks up once more, facing the historical mirror along the bar's wall. The mirror is original to the building – in fact, Wyatt Earp used to gaze into it while he drank here. When her eyes land first on the reflected clock and then over to Nedley, preoccupied with another patron, the beginnings of a plan start to formulate.

After all, she's a planner.

It's short work, finding Gus and begging off the rest of her shift. While Gus doesn't give her any grief about it, she does smirk at her knowingly, and Waverly imagines there will be some awkward conversations in her near future. But that can wait.

She changes into her street clothes in the backroom, taking care to remove the bar grime. When she stops to check herself in the mirror before leaving, what she sees is staggering. The smile in her face is full. Strong. It's a smile she hasn't seen on herself in a long time.

God, she's missed it.

In the car, she runs through a script in her head, practicing what she wants to say. Eventually, the fluttering starts in her veins, and her words start to jumble. So, she practices her yoga breathing and looks for a parking place outside the station.

And in Nedley's office, with the shades drawn and the weight of Nicole pressing down on her, her lips sore, her head swimming deliciously, she doesn't think her world has ever felt quite this solid or steady before.

Smiling, she tilts her head up and takes control of her fate.


End file.
